


Fair Game

by kuro49



Category: Now You See Me (Movies)
Genre: Getting Together, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 16:44:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7765417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn't one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fair Game

**Author's Note:**

> or the nysm2 ot4 fic that i never got, so here i am writing it for myself even if it is pre-relationship more than anything like F/M/M/M.

 

“I feel like you’re purposely torturing yourself.”

Merritt makes a comment from next to Danny, like he always does, because he has a hard time staying away. Even when Danny is trying his very best not to give him anything to work with, it always shows like a terrible little tell he can’t get rid of, and that alone keeps the mentalist coming back every time. But this, oh, _this_. Merritt hardly needs to be a mentalist to see the way Danny looks at Lula and Jack. Their dance is a cute one but Merritt isn’t about to be the one to point that one out.

“And if I am?”

 

She liked him, and he liked her too.

But he also liked plenty others too.

So, when she kisses him, he kisses back, and when he pulls back, his mouth a little redder from the smear of her lipstick, he tells her just that. Because how do you ever find a time good enough to explain that he also liked the rest of the Horsemen the way he is slowly, inevitably, falling for her.

Lula brings her hand to cup his cheek, giving him a gentle little pat with a smile to her lips.

“Oh, Jack, did you think I followed the Horsemen just for _your_ pretty face?”

Even if the perfect red is a little bit smeared, Jack feels as though she has just stolen his wallet and his belt from right underneath his nose all over again. She almost got him reaching down to touch his belt buckle if just to make sure it is still there.

Jack Wilder doesn’t miss what that skip in his chest must mean, the resounding _thump_ in the space where his heart should be. He isn't as lame as to say this out loud but she must have stolen his heart (or whatever fragment is left because he can hardly be blamed for giving and giving and giving when he is getting _this_ in return) because it sure feels like it.

 

“Then you should really stop, Daniel.”

Danny knows he sounds petulant, like a kid that doesn’t get his way even when he schools his expression perfectly. And there are more and more of these moments where nothing turns out the way he envisions it would. Instead, he tells Merritt with something too much like conviction.

“I will when Jack makes it clear that I should.”

 

Here is the thing.

She likes him. She likes him. She likes him too.

Jack Wilder is not the best thing to have happened to her. But the Horsemen, as a collective whole, are.

(You don’t believe a single thing he says, this man named Dylan Rhodes, named Dylan _Shrike_ , and isn't that quite the name to surface again in these circles after so long. But maybe, that is the point when he offers you a chance to be a part of the Horsemen. You still say yes, you say _yes_ , and you try to tame that grin that almost splits your face into two and fail and for the first time, it is not a bad thing at all.)

It is a pretty bold claim but she has never once claimed to be anything otherwise because how else does a girl make it long enough on these streets with geek magic to be noticed by the Eye. Lula May has to imagine that when the rain is falling in reverse and the playing cards are fluttering into a hurricane, the heads of the doves that she pulls off can come close to the name the Horsemen made for themselves.

Even being there next to Dylan, she has a feeling she is not _just_ looking at a boys only club from where she is standing when the three of them walks in. The truth is, as obvious as each of them makes it, she is no Henley Reeves. There is history no amount of sugar syrup blood and synthetic skin can replicate and she isn't stupid enough to pick up where Reeves left off.

She has no idea what she brings to this table but she damn well isn’t about to leave until even the tablecloth is cleared from the room to make her exit. Dedication will get her far, but stubborn bullheadedness? That will get her farther.

 

“Oh, Danny-boy, you have got to know the kid’s got the biggest crush on you.”

Merritt doesn’t believe himself as someone kind but he isn’t about to be so cruel as to fan this flame. There is no doubt that J. Daniel Atlas really doesn’t know how to give up. But of course, the kid wouldn’t look up to him quite as much if he did. Merritt just smiles, only to widen it into a grin at Danny's answering mutter.

“It’s not really a crush if it goes both ways.”

 

She appears in his life.

And he doesn’t want to call it the opposite of a disappearing trick because he can only make so many magician jokes.

Instead of clearing smoke though, there is just one change after another that leads to another that lands them on the opposite side of the world and J. Daniel Atlas is not a man that handles change lightly to say the least. He finds her in his home. He finds her next to Dylan. He finds her with Jack that ends with the kid crouched down on the floor of this ancient store in Macau, looking like he had his heart stolen then dropped right back into his palms. Even Danny himself hasn't gotten the chance to do that yet. A man can only deal with so many things at once.

As good as he is at multitasking, he isn't so good with emotions.

And when she manipulates that computer program right into the center of his palm. Well.

He thinks he has an idea what Jack must have felt.

 

“Threeway.”

Danny adds, glancing to Merritt.

“Fourway.”

Merritt corrects him, glancing over to the rest of the Horsemen.

 

Merritt is hardly blind to the way Lula jumps at the chance to do anything for the team. It reminds the mentalist of just how eager Jack was to prove himself during those early Horsemen days of theirs, even when each of them received a card of their own. Just because you have been scrapping by on the streets and never ended up on a Vegas stage before, just because you have done geek magic all your life doesn’t mean you are any less. Merritt is not about to admit that he is old enough to be one bit wiser than them but he does like these kids enough to have a hand in proving them their worth to themselves.

And if it takes this, this is exactly what he will do.

He stands up, he takes Danny by the hand, and he marches them both to where Lula and Jack are.

(And if this is what love is, you can safely say you love them.)

 


End file.
